


Bernhardiner

by MagitekUnit05953234



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Archive Warning Not Described, Canon Disabled Character, Depression, Dissociation, Flashbacks, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Ardyn Izunia, Mentioned Noctis Lucis Caelum, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Burn, Trans Ignis Scientia, Trans Male Character, world of ruin era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:08:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29198877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: “Would you like to talk about it?” Ignis offers. He looks odd like this, bare despite being fully clothed in fitted sweatpants and a soft grey tee. Maybe it’s because he’s on the floor, back pressed flat to the bathroom’s off-color particle-board vanity. Or maybe it’s because his hair is down, or because his visor is placed on the table beside his bed, or because he’s not wearing shoes. He looks odd like this. Gentler, somehow. Vulnerable.“I don’t,” Prompto swallows. Makes himself look away from his absent inspection of the faintest traces of stubble lining Ignis’s jaw. “I don’t know. No, I guess. Sorry.”
Relationships: Prompto Argentum/Ignis Scientia
Comments: 14
Kudos: 85





	1. Make Me Love Myself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlathecyborgpluviophile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlathecyborgpluviophile/gifts).



> Hello! It's me, finally back with some new stuff! Now don't worry, I see y'all looking concerned at the 1/2 chapter bit, but worry not: this fic is 100% completed and edited and ready to go. The second chapter will be up in a few days, and is twice the length of this first one to boot.  
> A note on the archive warning, while I have you here: this is a trauma recovery fic, and the archive warning refers to a pivotal source of one character's trauma. The actual event(s) that the warning pertains to occur before the fic, but are described vaguely in a few flashback sequences. Please keep this in mind as you read, and don't read if discussion of that topic and its effects on someone may trigger you or make you uncomfortable. Thanks!

Prompto can’t sleep.

It’s not a new occurrence. Prompto struggled with insomnia a lot back in the Crown City, laying flat on his back in bed for hours, hoping that he could just go the fuck to sleep if he tried hard enough. He hated the next-day haze that sleep meds would put him in —if they actually worked at all, which was rare— and more natural sleeplessness remedies never did much either. Warm milk was always disgusting, chamomile tea did absolutely nothing the one entire time Prompto tried it, and meditation didn’t mesh well with Prompto’s inability to turn his brain off.

There are no melatonin supplements here now. No mirtazapine, no zolpidem, no eszopiclone. No warm milk or chamomile tea. Prompto thinks if he were to try meditation now, he’d scream.

So. Prompto can’t sleep despite his exhaustion, and it seems there’s no helping him.

The roof above him, close enough to touch thanks to the poor combination of low ceilings and a bunk bed, is vaguely familiar in the way that a lot of caravan interiors are. They are more or less the same on the inside Lucis-round, so Prompto has spent a lot of time in the past year staring at a ceiling just like this one.

The more things change, right?

The caravan door, a few short yards away, creaks open slowly. Prompto tenses, turning his head to peer over the bedrail. Each squeal of under-oiled hinges makes it harder to convince himself to draw another breath —that it’s _safe_ to draw another breath. The streak of moonlight across the floor grows inch by inch, and the silhouette within it looms larger by the second.

Someone enters. Prompto scrutinizes them, their movements, the way they trail their hands on the wall as they pass into the caravan’s main chamber because too many times has Prompto seen one man’s face in another. It is not the appearance that proves a man’s identity anymore. Prompto’s learned that the hard way.

No limp on the left leg. No sway of the hips. A slight pause before each step, a moment’s hesitation. Shoulders squared proper-like despite the hour and the tiredness that must be weighing on the man as it weighs on Prompto.

It’s Ignis. Truly Ignis.

Prompto breathes out.

“Are you awake?” The query is little more than a whisper, but to Prompto’s overworked mind, it feels almost like a shout. A scream into the dark abyss, echoing around the shadowed corners of the caravan that could hide anything, that could hide anyone—

“Yeah,” Prompto pulls himself up a little to lean over the bedrail, watching Ignis turn his head one way then the other as he feels out the railings on the empty bunk bed opposite Prompto’s.

“Did I disturb you?” Ignis pulls off his gloves and folds them before vanishing them in a flash of crystal. Blue crystal. “I’m afraid I don’t know the time. I understand it is quite late…?”

It’s the right color, Prompto reminds himself. Chastises himself for the instinctual flinch he picked up from the noise of summoning. It’s not red. It’s not.

“It’s like… two,” Prompto hazards. He hasn’t looked at his phone in a bit, and it’s plugged into the caravan’s single outlet in the kitchenette anyway, so he can’t exactly check. “It’s okay. I was up already.”

“I see,” Ignis says. He untucks the covers from the bunk he seems to have claimed as his own, drawing them straight down to the foot of the bed. He stands there for a few seconds, motionless before he strips the bunk entirely. Rather than folding the bedclothes like Prompto expects, Ignis balls them up and places them on the floor, nudging them beneath the bed with one foot. He then draws fresh sheets from the void —ones Prompto isn’t familiar with— and begins to make up the bed.

“Didn’t like the sheets?” Prompto asks. Then, because he doesn’t think and doesn’t know when to shut up, he says: “The plaid didn’t look good to you?”

Shit. Gods damn it.

“Sorry,” Prompto starts. “I didn’t th—”

“It’s quite alright. If they are the same sheets as the last time we stayed here, I will admit that the orange was not to my liking,” Ignis stretches over to reach one of the far corners of the bed, one seam of his fitted sheet clasped in both hands. As he lifts the mattress and tucks the sheet under one corner, it audibly pops up from beneath a corner on the opposite side. Ignis curses under his breath, just barely loud enough for Prompto to hear.

“Want some help?” Prompto ventures.

“I can make a bed on my own,” Ignis bites out.

He probably didn’t mean to snap. He probably isn’t actually mad. He’s tired. It’s late. He isn’t going to wait until Prompto falls into a fitful sleep, summon a blade, and climb up to Prompto’s bunk to press his knife to Prompto’s neck and—

He won’t.

He _won’t_.

That’s not what Ignis does.

He’s probably not actually mad.

“I’m sorry,” Prompto bites his lip, cringing at the feeling of skin peeling under his teeth but not quite able to stop himself. “I know you can take care of yourself. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

Ignis sweeps his hand across his bed, finding the final corner of the sheets and tucking it under. He takes up his pillow next, already encased in cloth matching the sheets, and places it at the head of the bed. He doesn’t bother putting the blankets on proper, instead piling them in the middle of the bed. He doesn’t look at —or well, turn toward— Prompto. “I know. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

Prompto’s lip is bleeding. It tastes like iron, like the chill of a scalpel pressed against his tongue, threatening but not cutting. _Not yet_ , he said.

What was he waiting for?

Why didn’t he…?

Prompto and Ignis do not speak to each other for the rest of the night. Gladio never comes in to sleep. The sun doesn’t rise until eleven.

* * *

“You need to stay here,” Gladio laces up his boots. He has a backpack on his shoulder and his hair tied up. Prompto has the feeling that if he hadn’t randomly awoken several hours before his usual, Gladio would have left without anyone knowing until after the fact.

“Why?” Prompto pads across the cold hallway tile, feet bare. He’s still wearing the clothes he fell asleep in.

“Someone needs to look after Ignis.”

“And it won’t be you?” Prompto can’t help but bristle. Not just because Gladio is infantilizing Ignis even after Ignis proved he is capable of handling himself several times over on the way to Niflheim, but also that he’d rather run and leave the aftermath in Prompto’s hands without looking back. “The hell are you even going to do out there? Hunt? Like you did for ages after you went to the Trials when you should have come right back to us? What’s the point? We’re supposed to stick together! Ignis doesn’t need looking after anyway! He can fight if he has to, he can get around, he’s even started learning to cook again.”

“It’s not just Ignis that needs looking after.”

“Wha—”

“Do you think I haven’t noticed?” Gladio finishes tying his shoes and hoists his bag higher on his shoulders. “You’re not safe on your own right now. I hardly feel right leaving you in a room by yourself with the way you act like someone’s about to take your head off any minute. You’d be a liability in the field, in the power plant, anywhere you can’t scope out every corner every three godsdamned seconds. Until you get your head on straight, you need someone to keep an eye on you.”

“I’m not a kid!” Prompto realizes he’s stormed toward Gladio until he’s already right next to him, grabbing hold of Gladio’s wrist. “What is wrong with you?”

Gladio turns, his face haloed by the overhead light behind him. Prompto can’t make out his face. He’s looming over Prompto, massive and menacing, and Prompto can’t see his face like this; he can’t see anything but the way Gladio’s fists clench at his sides. Prompto can feel the tendons in Gladio’s wrist move under Prompto’s grip, and Prompto can’t _do it_. He lets go, feeling the phantom of their contact sticky and rotten on his hands, and he steps back. Now that the angle’s changed, he can see Gladio’s face better, but his eyes are amber. His eyes were _always_ amber, but something about it now makes Prompto feel sick.

“Are you… are you really leaving?” Prompto blinks rapidly, trying to clear his sight. He misses his glasses. He ran out of contacts four months ago.

“We need to make money somehow. No way to keep this apartment without it. I’m going to hunt, and you and Ignis are going to stay here. This isn’t up for debate,” Gladio’s jaw twitches as he gives Prompto a once-over. If Prompto ignores the color of his eyes for just a moment, he could almost think that maybe Gladio looks a little sad. “I’ll visit when I can, but there’s a lot of hunting to do these days and not a lot of hunters willing to go out on normal hunts. Not while they’re still working on evacuating all the other outposts.”

He leaves ten or so minutes later. Afterward, Prompto sits with his back to the front door and pillows his chin on his knees. Prompto hears Ignis get out of bed in the next room over, and Prompto can’t help but feel that if Ignis had woken up, maybe Gladio could have been talked out of leaving.

They were all supposed to stick together. Even without Noct, they _were_.

Without Noct and Gladio, what were the ones left behind?

 _Not much_ , Prompto thinks nine sleepless hours later as he tries to guide Ignis through making a green pepper omelet on the stovetop. _Not much at all_.

* * *

The apocalypse lasts four months before they have to give up the apartment. It’s too big for just two people, the city official in charge of residential planning whose name Prompto never remembers said. The city breaks their lease agreement for them, offering up the replacement of a minuscule studio apartment near the City Centre. Ignis seems to take it in stride, claiming that he can help with administrative and legislative work in the Center once he is fully recovered, and that the forced relocation is _actually_ beneficial to everyone.

Prompto discovered quite quickly that he hates studio apartments. He is well used to living in cramped quarters, but at least his apartment in high school had walls separating the tiny rooms. Other than two closet spaces —one for coats, according to Ignis, one for everyday wear— and a bathroom, the whole apartment is essentially the same room. Gone are the days of sleeping either in a room to himself or nodding accidentally off on a friend’s shoulder. If Prompto was to wake up from a nightmare and make enough noise to wake Ignis, he’s pretty sure he’d straight-up die right then and there. Sleeping just a bed-length at _best_ away in what is essentially one giant room of an apartment means that Ignis is theoretically privy to all of Prompto’s nocturnal disturbances if he happens to be awake for them. How fucking _awful_.

Everyone in their merry band of men has had recurring nightmares at one point or another. It’s to be expected considering their life circumstances. Noct had a shopping list of issues that cropped up when he slept, like that assassination attempt from when he was a kid, the fall of Tenebrae, his father’s death, and so on. Ignis started sleeping incredibly poorly after Altissia. Gladio… well, Prompto was never privy to what Gladio was dealing with, but it didn’t seem too good.

Prompto feels a little stupid to still be having nightmares about what he went through. So what, his friends had constant brushes with death and trauma and other really, _really_ serious things, and Prompto is like _this_ over what _he_ went through? It could have been so much worse. Really, all that happened was—

Was—

Prompto scrambles up from where he was sitting on the end of his bed, hustling as fast he can toward the bathroom with a trembling hand pressed tightly over his mouth. He doesn’t end up actually throwing up once he’s closed the door behind him, but it’s a close thing. He spits up thick saliva, trying and failing to quell the bone-deep shudders that wrack his body every few seconds. He plants his elbows on the toilet seat and stares at the pristine porcelain beneath the water after the bulk of his dry heaving has passed, wondering just how long he is going to have to live like this.

There’s a knock at the door.

“Are you alright?” Ignis’s voice is soft, both in volume and tone. “May I come in?”

Ignis has always been kind to Prompto for the most part. He’s polite to a fault and always tolerated Prompto’s shitty attempts at striking up conversation back before they knew each other well. They’re friends. They _are_. Prompto would readily place his life in Ignis’s hands without a second thought. The thing is, Prompto still isn’t sure where he stands with Ignis sometimes outside of that. Trusting someone with your life and knowing they actually like you are two very different things.

So Prompto hesitates. Isn’t quite sure how to respond.

Ignis calls his name again. Brushes against the doorknob. Maybe it’s accidental. Maybe not. Either way, the knob moves slightly, and Prompto startles.

“Um… if you want to? I’m okay, though. I promise.”

Ignis opens the door slowly, giving Prompto plenty of time to tell him to get lost if he wanted. Prompto stares up at him, silhouetted in the light from the rest of the apartment outside, and another shiver runs through him.

“Are you ill?” Ignis steps into the bathroom, following the lines of the sink with one hand until the close edge, at which he kneels down beside Prompto. “I believe we have Emetrol if you need it.”

“I’m fine,” Prompto says, though he finds he has to stifle a cough as he says it. “Don’t worry. Just uh… yeah, no. I’m fine. I’m not sick.”

“I see,” Ignis pauses, then sits himself fully on the floor. “May I sit with you?”

Prompto, bewildered, agrees.

They sit in silence more or less, with Prompto taking measured breaths and trying to think of anything other than what set him off. It feels almost like the times Prompto had warped by bullet, a skill that is apparently rare enough to turn heads in training and get him what seemed to be genuine approval from Cor, in those early days when that sort of thing was rarer than rain over Hammerhead. It’s a pretty neat trick, but it always leaves Prompto feeling like his insides have been wrung out by a giant, bruised and queasy to the point of vomiting. He doesn’t do it often.

“Would you like to talk about it?” Ignis offers. He looks odd like this, bare despite being fully clothed in fitted sweatpants and a soft grey tee. Maybe it’s because he’s on the floor, back pressed flat to the bathroom’s off-color particle-board vanity. Or maybe it’s because his hair is down, or because his visor is placed on the table beside his bed, or because he’s not wearing shoes. He looks odd like this. Gentler, somehow. Vulnerable.

“I don’t,” Prompto swallows. Makes himself look away from his absent inspection of the faintest traces of stubble lining Ignis’s jaw. “I don’t know. No, I guess. Sorry.”

Prompto can’t help the shame that rises in his throat, rivaling the familiar sting of stomach acid. It feels like he’s failed somehow, to not want to talk about it. To not take the olive branch that Ignis is extending. To turn away the obvious offer of comfort.

But talking doesn’t feel like it will help. Right now, talking just feels like Prompto’s throwing himself into it again, diving deep into boiling water after just escaping the pot as it began to simmer.

Why bother Ignis with any of this anyway? Isn’t he just here because he’s supposed to be? Because that’s what friends do?

Prompto doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know.

Ignis sits beside him on the bathroom tile, radiating body heat. After a while, Prompto can’t tell if Ignis is asleep or not.

They both end up dozing in the end, waking with aching bones and an unspoken agreement not to mention it in the morning.

* * *

As hard as the end of the world is, Prompto doesn’t mind it half as much as he minds not having Noct and Gladio around. He doesn’t believe himself to be unhealthily dependent on them or anything, but when you have a grand total of three friends in the world and no other family, it sure as hell hurts to have that number cut to one in the span of a few weeks. Now, months later, Prompto feels that maybe he will not be rid of that cold, empty void between his lungs until he sees his family back together again.

Gods know when that will be.

~~If it will ever happen.~~

“Prompto,” Ignis calls from the kitchenette. “Would you mind coming here for a moment?”

Prompto lifts himself from his chair, rolling the pain out from his shoulders and back. He knows it's no good for him to slouch these days after the seventeen ways his spine and upper limbs are messed up after everything, but he still hasn’t managed to kick the habit no matter how much he tries.

Ignis turns as Prompto enters the little cook space, a cramped thing loosely cordoned off from the rest of the studio with a long countertop. Ignis holds a tiny, tall bowl —or a really wide, short cup— in one hand and a little whisk in the other. “Do you like tea?”

“Tea?” Prompto steps closer, peering at the little dish Ignis has. It’s one of those fancy white ones with the delicate blue designs on it. Prompto isn’t entirely sure he’s ever seen it before but can’t remember Ignis going out recently to buy something like this. “I dunno. I’ve never really had it.”

“Truly?” Ignis hums. “I didn’t know that about you. Most have had it at some point, even if only when sick.”

“Ah well. My family wasn’t really into tea, so. Yeah. I made it sometimes at the coffee shop —the one on Auxili, y’know— when I worked there? But uh, I never really drank it. The coffee had more caffeine, so I always went for that instead.”

“I see,” Ignis says. “Would you like to try some?”

“Oh, uh. Sure, I guess,” Prompto’s hands are very suddenly full as Ignis pushes the ornate little bowl into them. The bottom of the porcelain is hot enough that Prompto doesn’t want to touch it for too long, but the upper reaches are pleasantly warm against his ever-chilled hands. Prompto lets it sit in his hands for a brief moment, enjoying the heat, before bringing the bowl to his lips.

It’s good.

Prompto draws the cup away from him and studies the tea, swirling the cup a little to watch the bright green liquid twirl within itself.

It’s sort of odd, honestly. Prompto isn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t the way this tastes. It really does taste just the way it looks, very green. Like the grass before it turned sickly grey with the lack of sun, surviving only by the grace of the gods (if Prompto had to guess at a reason for any vegetation’s survival at this point). It makes Prompto think of the forests blanketing Duscae and the soft, verdant hills in Cleigne. It makes him think of the seawater breaking against the stones at Caem, the air so thick with salt you could practically feel it on your skin. It makes him think of the sun.

It’s been so long since Prompto has seen the sun. Longer, for Ignis.

“I like it,” Prompto takes another sip, watching over the edge of his bowl as Ignis’s lips part in response.

Ignis nods minutely, twisting at the waist to set his whisk in the cat-shaped spoon rest he’s had since Shiva knows when. Prompto can’t really decipher Ignis’s expression, but he’s smiling a little. He hasn’t done that in Prompto’s company in a while. Not that Prompto knows, anyway. “This is matcha tea. It wasn’t particularly common in Insomnia, but Lestallum has quite the tea garden in the northern reaches of the city. They used to export it to Tenebrae, where it was somewhat of a delicacy to my understanding.”

“To your understanding…?”

“Well, aside from our brief sojourn during our… our journey to Niflheim, I have never been to Tenebrae.”

“Oh,” Prompto takes a drink. “I thought you were from there? The uh… the accent and everything. I thought you were…”

“Foreign?” Ignis supplies. “My family, though traditionally Lucian, spent a generation in Tenebrae. My parents and uncle both lived there for most of their lives before bringing our name back to Lucis and their accents with them. As I learned to speak from them, I acquired it without ever having stepped foot outside Insomnia.”

“Oh,” Prompto can’t help but feel disappointed, somehow. All this time, he had assumed that he and Ignis shared being outsiders. Turns out it’s just Prompto. “I’m kind of surprised you kept the accent so long.”

“Typically, foreign accents are trained out of royal servants in childhood in favor of a common or court accent, but his Majesty never ordered it as part of my education. I can’t say I know why, but I am hardly bothered by retaining it.”

“I uh, I always thought it was cool. I like it,” Prompto blurts out. He hides his reddening cheeks behind his tea, despite the fact that Ignis wouldn’t be able to see them anyway.

“Do you?” Ignis tilts his head. “Well, my thanks, I suppose.”

Prompto is sure he imagined it, but he could have sworn for a moment that Ignis was blushing, too.

* * *

“I can’t do this,” Prompto breathes the words into his knees, bent and pressed to his face as he’s curled at the head of his bed. “I can’t fucking do this. I can’t do this.”

“What is it?” Ignis stands a foot away, hands twitching at his sides. Prompto watches one, then the other, make aborted motions to… to reach for him? To touch him? “What’s wrong?”

“Forget it,” Prompto burrows his fingers in his hair, digging his nails into his scalp. The world is hazy and indistinct, but _this_ he can feel. “Forget it. It’s just a fucking dream. It doesn’t matter.”

“If you are this affected, I would say that it does matter,” Ignis does reach forward now, and Prompto can’t stop himself from tensing up. Ignis’s hand pauses in the air, inches away. Prompto stares at his trembling fingertips. “You don’t have to speak to any specifics, but if it is truly bothering you this—”

“The fuck are you even still letting me be here for?” Prompto knows he’s being awful, but the aftershocks of his nightmare are still tearing through his grey matter, and he wants to claw it out and then tear up the rest of the world, too. “Seriously! What’s even in it for you? You don’t need me around to help you anymore. You probably never did in the first place, did you? What’s the point of keeping something like me around, huh?”

“I don’t,” Ignis falters. “I have never harbored any intent to send you away.”

“Sure,” Prompto chuckles through clenched teeth. “So, what’s in it for you?”

“I don’t consider our relationship a transaction.”

“Then… Ignis, I’m not even a fucking _person_. The hell are you doing putting up with this? With me? I’ve woken you up every fucking night for the past month because I can’t sit down and shut up when I’ve got a broken part like any _good machine_. What are you getting out of this?”

It’s been a bad month. It’s been eight since Noct disappeared and nearly as many since Gladio fucked off into the wilderness. Prompto’s had nightmares on and off for much of his life, but they really ratcheted up after Insomnia fell, and then even more after Altissia, and then exponentially more after Gralea. It seemed for a while that they were calming down somewhat, but for some reason, something about this month has just been scrambling Prompto’s nerves because he’s been getting annihilated by his own brain every single night for weeks now. He knows that every time he wakes up to shake and hyperventilate in bed or closes himself in the bathroom, he disturbs Ignis’s sleep, too. For Ignis’s part, he seemed to ignore it for a while, but now he’s here. Brazenly awake and trying to _help_ , as if he doesn’t know that there’s no fixing the parts of Prompto that are rusted and creaking. There are no spare parts to switch into him to make him run right again. He’s just like this forever, and he can’t figure out why Ignis won’t just give it the fuck up already and kick him out. It’s not like Ignis can’t pay for this apartment all on his own; he makes triple in his administrative work than Prompto does through his odd jobs. There’s no _benefit_ to this anymore.

“I want you to be here,” Ignis assures, sounding so confident even though it just doesn’t make sense. “I don’t need to get anything out of it. I do, regardless. There is no other person I would want with me now.”

“Even Noct?” Prompto doesn’t manage to stop himself from drawing that knife, feeling nothing but mortification at the way it gets Ignis to physically pull back. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Ignis says after a moment. “I wish he were with us, yes. But that does not change the fact that as we are now, I much prefer _you_ here than not. Regardless of your origins, what you believe yourself to be, or what struggles you are currently enduring.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Explain it to me, then.”

Prompto can’t even begin to put it into words. He grasps for them in the churning dark in his skull and can’t find anything that expresses the way he’s felt ever since he woke up to iron and ice and an ache that has not lessened in the slightest all this time later. “I shouldn’t be alive, Ignis.”

Ignis startles at that, visibly taken aback. He stammers Prompto’s name, then: “Are you considering something… rash?”

“With the world like this? Who fucking isn’t,” Prompto realizes he’s still teary-eyed from his initial post-nightmare breakdown and straightens his legs and leans back so he can furiously rub at his eyes. “That’s not the point, anyway. I _literally_ should not exist. You get that, don’t you? I’m not human. I’m not a _person_. I’m the direct result of actual fucking war crimes. If one person hadn’t randomly picked me out of thousands of other completely identical things twenty years ago, I would have been just another gun with legs we all spent months killing without a second thought. All I am is an MT that got a little too fucking uppity and got a personality and shit, and now twenty years later, here I am, being a drain on everyone and everything around me. Gods, I seriously thought I had my shit worked out back then. Can you believe that? When Aranea and I split up, I seriously thought I had it together. I thought I would actually be okay living like this. And then I— shit, godsdamnit.”

Prompto’s shaking again. Letting himself think about it was a mistake.

“May I… sit down?”

“What?” Prompto glances up to see Ignis hovering a little closer than before. “Uh… sure. Plenty of bed.”

The mattress dips as Ignis sits gingerly on the edge of it. He turns to Prompto, though Ignis’s face remains pointed in the general vicinity of his own lap. “Do you truly want to die, Prompto?”

Prompto swallows thickly. “Uh… I don’t know. Sometimes. I’ve never tried, not really, but… well, you don’t end up like this without thinking about it.”

“I’m glad you are still with us.” Shiva, it actually sounds like he means it. “Can you tell me something, Prompto?”

Why not, at this point? He’s been making a fool of himself the whole night so far. Might as well bare his whole soul and get it over with. “Shoot.”

“As far as I understand it, there is very little difference between yourself and a person conceived through artificial methods… invitro and the like. Would you consider them inhuman?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Prompto shakes his head. “Intent? Purpose?”

“There are no single purposes that someone is born to fulfill.”

“Tell that to Noct.”

Ignis breathes out, audible and slow. “Noctis is… free to choose his path in the end. The gods may have prophesied about him, but in the end, he has his own will —as do we all. If he returns and decides to forgo ending the Night, neither gods nor fate can prevent him from doing so. We are not chained to the circumstances of our creation.”

“I guess.”

Ignis doesn’t get it. Not really. Prompto doesn’t know how to make him understand.

“He tells me that I’m fake,” Prompto hates the way the words taste in his mouth and hates the way they drop scourge-black in his head even worse. “That I’m not the real me. That there never _was_ a real me. That I’m just a _thing_. A toy to be played with to pass the time, just waiting for the person he actually cares about —for Noct— to show up. He makes sure I know it. He makes sure I _feel_ it. Every fucking night since the first on that cross. I can’t stop thinking about it when I’m awake. I can’t stop feeling his hands on me. I can’t _stop_ —”

Prompto gags, nausea rising once again as he swears hands slide up his thighs and metal bites into his wrists. He’s in bed, he’s in Lestallum, but at the same time, he’s not. He’s in the Keep, and he’s strung up like a sacrifice, and he’s being defaced by amused, insouciant touches. Despite being the center of attention, it has never been clearer just how much he doesn’t matter. He’s something to ruin, living bait at best and at worst, simply a cheap doll with which to stave away boredom. There are so _many_ of him. Would Noct even notice if he arrived to find something else waiting?

“Prompto.”

He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. The cross digs into his ribs, his arms. He can’t move. His eyes open, and in front of him is Ignis t̶̪̀h̶̃ͅā̸̙t̵͎͊'̷̺̐s̴͙̈́ ̴͉̽n̴͉̏o̴̬̚t̷̤͌ ̷̣͠Ỉ̵͉g̵̖͑n̶̯̔i̴̤̒s̸̻̿ and any minute now he’s going to be hurt _again_. Prompto can’t stand to look, but he can’t look away. If he looks away, it’s only going to be worse.

_Ah-ah, eyes open._

“Can you hear me?”

There’s rust on the keycard scanner by the door. When he’s alone, he spends a long time staring at it. He doesn’t know why. Sometimes, he fantasizes about getting over there somehow and scanning his wretched brand because then at least it would be good for something. At least it would be his escape.

Ignis’s t̶̪̀h̶̃ͅā̸̙t̵͎͊'̷̺̐s̴͙̈́ ̴͉̽n̴͉̏o̴̬̚t̷̤͌ ̷̣͠Ỉ̵͉g̵̖͑n̶̯̔i̴̤̒s̸̻̿ hand is reaching toward Prompto, and Prompto flinches back as fingers brush against his shoulder. Except, he can’t flinch back. He’s restrained, hanging by his wrists, his held back flush against the cross by the bars encasing his chest. He can’t move so… so why…?

“I’m sorry, Prompto. I won’t touch you again, I swear to it. Can you see me?”

It doesn’t… it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes _sense_. What is happening? Where is he?

Who is he?

“You have to breathe, Prompto. Breathe with me. Follow the motion of my hands. Can you see them? In, two, three, four…”

Prompto gasps in air, his eyes and lungs burning. Ignis t̶̪̀h̶̃ͅā̸̙t̵͎͊'̷̺̐s̴͙̈́ ̴͉̽n̴͉̏o̴̬̚t̷̤͌ ̷̣͠Ỉ̵͉g̵̖͑n̶̯̔i̴̤̒s̸̻̿ is guiding him through square breathing. Why? What is this?

“Prompto, can you speak?”

He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t speak. But he’s supposed to. Maybe if he does, this will stop.

Prompto offers up the name from bleeding lips, not of the image in front of him but of the man casting the image. The man whose touch is still burning into Prompto’s flesh.

“The first night after Insomnia fell, you told me you left a houseplant in the window of your apartment.”

What?

“A small cactus, I believe. You named it after an Assassin’s Creed character and planned on watering it as soon as we got back from Altissia.”

What is this?

“You told me you couldn’t manage to cry about the city, nor its people, but that you were upset about the cactus. That it was dead or would die without you to take care of it. You said you felt like a bad person.”

Who…?

“I assured you that you weren’t. That it is human nature to latch onto something small when the magnitude of a tragedy is so great.”

Where…?

“I told you about my desk in the Citadel. How, within one of the drawers was a drawing Noctis made for me nearly a decade and a half ago. I wished I had taken it with me when we departed because it is nearly certain that it is long gone in the wake of the Fall.”

“Ignis?” Prompto still feels off, still feels distant, but the world is resolving into something else now. A studio apartment in Lestallum, bathed in sickly, green-tinged moonlight that just barely manages to shine through the windows.

“That’s right,” Ignis says. “Are you alright?”

Prompto doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he settles for a noncommittal noise. He runs his hands along the blankets beneath him, flexes his shoulders, taking in the sights and sensations of reality.

“You are in our apartment. It is four fifteen in the morning on April nineteenth, 757. You woke up from a nightmare a short time ago and suffered an anxiety attack. It’s over now, and you are safe. No one can or will hurt you here.”

Shit.

“I’m sorry,” Prompto drops his head, finding it near-impossible to look Ignis in the eye now that he has the freedom not to. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t know why you put up with me. This is too much.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“You should have kicked me out a long time ago.”

Ignis shakes his head, audibly murmuring a denial. After a few seconds of hesitation, he holds out his left hand, palm up. It is bare, pale, and crossed with raised, lightning-like burn scars emanating from his third finger. An invitation, unassuming and nonthreatening. Prompto takes it on impulse and shivers. Ignis is so warm.

“You are always welcome here,” Ignis says. “You are always welcome with me. Don’t ever doubt that.”


	2. So That I Might Love You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jokes on you guys, I posted the second chapter a day early because I'm impatient.  
> Thanks for reading.

It was only a matter of time before the lack of testosterone caused problems.

While Ignis had been able to fill his prescription —albeit with a high monetary cost— in Lestallum while more or less on the run, the apocalypse has more or less depleted all resources of that sort. No one is willing to search abandoned settlements for “frivolities” like hormone treatments when the entire race is in desperate need of painkillers, antibiotics, and potions, so Ignis has not had one of his shots for three months now.

Honestly, he’s sort of surprised it took this long for his body to adjust to its new normal. After two months with no changes, he had almost let himself believe that perhaps he would be able to coast through the fickle designs his body wrecked when not stemmed by HRT with no significant changes. The years of hormone blockers followed by testosterone injections did not make him impervious to the hormones his body naturally creates when left to its own devices.

Today finds Ignis curled in his bed with a warmed bag of rice pressed to his abdomen. He is certainly capable of working through pain if he must, but if he had obligations today, he can no longer remember what they had been. All he wants to do now is to lay here, soothe the ache of what must be incredibly confused organs within him, and rest.

“Hey, Ignis,” the door to the apartment opens and then closes just as quickly. Prompto seems to struggle with his shoes for a moment, as he mutters curses whilst lingering by the door. “You holding up okay?”

“As well as I can,” Ignis replies. “Were you able to find… supplies?”

“Yeah,” Prompto ambles over, and his familiar steps are accompanied by a faint rustling of thick paper. A shopping bag, most likely. “I uh… I couldn’t get any of the reusable kind. These ones you’re supposed to wash, I guess. I don’t know. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Ignis sits up and motions for the bag. “My apologies for sending you out for this.”

“Hey, no problem. I don’t really know anything about this stuff but whatever you need, just ask. It’s no big deal.”

Thank the gods for Prompto Argentum.

Ignis feels a lot better when properly supplied and freshened up. Though there is certainly a level of discomfort —both physical and mental— that he will now have to get used to monthly, he will learn to live with it in time. It helps knowing that he is not the only one dealing with this. He recalls finding another man in much similar straits last time he attempted to go to the pharmacy himself only to find the supply of testosterone replacements and supplements depleted for good. They did not speak for long and are certainly not anything more than vague acquaintances at that, but it is good to know that Ignis is not alone in this, somehow.

“How about I cook tonight?”

“I’m not an invalid, Prompto.”

“I know, I know,” Prompto laughs a little from the direction of the kitchenette. “But you deserve a break. I’ve only cooked once this week so far. Let me have a turn.”

“If you insist.”

“I do! Besides, I owe you.”

“Do you?” Ignis stifles a yawn as he rounds the corner into the kitchenette and makes a beeline past Prompto for the mug cabinet. “I was under the impression that I called in that favor when I asked you to go out for me this morning.”

“What? Nah, that was something you needed. Favors are for stuff you _want_. I got this.”

Ignis can’t keep the smile from his lips as he sets the water to boil. “I suppose I must thank you, then.”

Prompto lightly taps Ignis’s left shoulder, signaling for him to move aside for a moment. Ignis steps out of the way and listens to Prompto dig through the pot and pan cabinet. As Prompto insisted on assigning himself the duty of putting away clean dishes after Ignis washes them nightly, they tend to be horrifically organized and precariously stacked in each other. Attempting to obtain most types of dishware is a struggle, but a challenge that Ignis has started to almost consider fun after living with Prompto for as long as he has.

“Do you have plans for our meal tonight?”

“Well, rations this week had a metric ton of those little greenhouse tomatoes. We got corn too, and I think we still have a bunch of bags of beans, so I was thinking, uh… what’s it called? Succotash, I think.”

“That sounds lovely,” Ignis crosses to the refrigerator and cracks open the freezer, searching through the rows of frozen foods. “Do we have any cockatrice left?”

“Yeah. Far left side, I think.”

Ignis locates what he believes to be a sealed package of the meat in question and feels for the sticky label that Prompto affixes to all of their foods that can’t be easily identified by touch when still packaged. When Ignis finds the little sticker, it’s cut in the shape of a triangle. Cockatrice, then. “If we were to add about half of this to dinner tonight, it will stretch well for the rest of the weekend.”

“Woah, hey Iggy! I’m doing the cooking tonight, yeah? I got it covered. Go chill out!”

Ignis is bundled out of the kitchen by enthusiastic hands, finding himself sat on the sofa beside the apartment’s largest window, listening to a book through an earbud in one ear while keeping the other on Prompto’s kitchen exploits. Prompto and Ignis usually fend for themselves when it comes to breakfast and lunch, as Ignis’s work schedule draws him away from the apartment earlier than Prompto usually awakens. For dinner, however, they have become well used to taking turns cooking for the… household, if it could be called such a thing.

The two of them really have become quite domestic, Ignis thinks. If it weren’t for his stark awareness of the reality of the new world, the conditions of the eventual dawn, and the sickness that haunts Prompto’s dreams and waking hours both, Ignis could almost convince himself that they’re a pair in a storybook.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

* * *

Ignis has had, since he was very young, too many irons in the fire. His entire life has been a juggling session between his duties, his own desires, the overlap between, and the void without. Too often he has had to tend only some, and lost the rest to a flame-warped fate among the charcoal. Attend meetings at the cost of sleep, escape from his parents’ care at the cost of the Stupeo legacy, join the Crownsguard early at the cost of his MA, avoid further Council scrutiny at the cost of his love life.

On the last thread, well. There were no rules that forbade Ignis from pursuing a relationship, but many members of the Council —people who Ignis was unfortunately obligated to please in order to have any hope of bolstering Noctis’s own credibility— already believed Ignis to be indecisive and immature. Having a romantic relationship, even if it had no effect whatsoever on his work, would have only brought to him accusations of being unfocused and uncommitted to his proper place in the court. A proper advisor, especially at his age, would have no time for silly dalliances with girls —or in Ignis’s case, boys— and should wait until proper marrying age to even consider finding a partner. While he’s at it, he should certainly keep an eye only on those who would bring honor to his class. Strictly speaking, none of that was a _requirement_ but Ignis is well and capable of reading between the lines of nobles’ suggestions and unspoken expectations.

It should come as no surprise that Ignis has only the most basic experience with romantic relationships. Apart from a nervous, chaste dinner date with Gladio at age fifteen —after which Gladio gently let him down due to Ignis’s near-inability to look him in the eye for the majority of their date— Ignis has never pursued anyone and had to turn down the one or two people who pursued him once he hit nineteen or twenty.

It is because of this that Ignis is more or less at a loss about what to do now.

Though Ignis is well-taught in reading people, his skill has been much diminished since the loss of his sight. People broadcast so much of their intent through their eyes, the tense and shift of their weight, the nervous tics carried through their hands and posture. Though Ignis can still read the sound of a man, he has lost one of the most important resources in discerning the thoughts of another. Combining this loss with his lack of experience in these matters in general, it is more or less a given that Ignis cannot tell what Prompto thinks of him anymore.

To say that Ignis and Prompto were always on good terms is a stretch of the truth. When they first met, Prompto was fifteen. Ignis had glimpsed him —energetic and vibrant— at Noct’s side as Noct sauntered up to Ignis’s car after school, but the moment the the two of them came within five yards of the car Prompto flattened into someone nigh-unrecognizable, a chromatic shadow at Noct’s back more than anything else. It took nearly a year for Prompto to grow into his skin when around Ignis, and it was quite the long year. Ignis could never help the pangs of guilt he felt when he would enter the room during a study session only for Prompto to fall silent and wary, eyes locked on his textbook or the floor. Prompto never stayed for meals, nor stayed the night, nor accepted a ride despite living one metro ride and two bus routes away from Noctis’s apartment. It wasn’t until Prompto thwarted an assassination attempt on Noctis on a school outing that Prompto began to gain some sort of confidence in his place at Noct’s side and began to properly engage. Since then, Ignis had an admiration for Prompto despite his flighty and irreverent nature, and had a great appreciation for his place in Noctis’ life. In the years that followed Prompto’s opening up, they had become quite well-acquainted with one another despite rarely being in one another’s company without Noct as a common denominator.

It wasn’t until some hazy point in the midst of their godsforsaken road trip that Ignis began to properly entertain deeper feelings for Prompto. He hasn’t the slightest idea when it was exactly that those thoughts began to grow, but he remembers clearly the moment he realized it.

_Hey, hold onto me, yeah? I won’t let you fall. Take it one step at a time and we’ll be okay, got it? We’ll be okay._

Ignis has never told Prompto how much he appreciated him in those times. It sits on the tip of his tongue every night he awakens to hear Prompto gasping for breath in the dark, choking on memories of which Ignis dare not speculate the contents. The softness within Ignis’s ribs remains nestled inside him and Ignis cannot fathom how and when to remove it, how and when to present it to the man who Ignis can no longer interpret in his entirety, hoping that what he offers is enough. Ignis could not bear the thought of spoiling the trust he and Prompto have rebuilt with trembling hands in the aftermath of the Gralean keep. If the confession were to go sour, if Prompto would assume Ignis would not take no for an answer and then acquiesce to a relationship he did not truly want? It would kill Ignis. There is no worse crime than adding to the hurt that already bows Prompto’s shoulders.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes,” Ignis replies, turning where he lay to face Prompto’s bed. The gap between them, bisected by a small nightstand and a few feet of flooring, feels unbearably wide. “Are you alright?”

“I dunno,” Prompto clears his throat. “I just… I don’t know. Nevermind. Sorry.”

“What is it?”

“Can I turn on the light? For a little bit?”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t know the difference.”

That is somewhat a lie. To a degree, Ignis is capable of discerning light. It would not be enough to disturb his sleep if he were sleeping, but when conscious Ignis _can_ perceive a mild lightening of the not-black that typically constitutes his world. It is hardly a bother worth mentioning.

“Thanks,” Prompto clicks on their bedside lamp and shifts his weight enough for the springs in his mattress to quietly squeak beneath him. “Sorry. I just… wanted to see. I guess.”

There is something there, underneath what little Prompto was willing to admit to. _I wanted to see if I was safe here_ , perhaps. _I wanted to see if you were still you_ , worse. _I wanted to see_ …

“I had a dream,” Prompto offers after a moment’s pause. “It’s uh… nothing different than usual, I guess. I just wanted the light on. After it, I mean.”

Ignis offers, as he always does, a listening ear. He can’t fix Prompto’s trauma, just as Prompto cannot fix Ignis’s, but Ignis will be there for him always. He would not have it any other way.

* * *

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“It’s been a year, Gladio!” Ignis breathes deeply, reminding himself that it is no good to become incensed. “If it weren’t for the Marshal, the only reason we would know you were still alive was your portion of rent getting paid every month.”

“Well, I am alive. Now you know.”

Gladio sounds somewhere between cowed and cross, clipping the ends from his words the way he tends to do when he’s uncomfortable. Ignis finds an odd sort of satisfaction in that, knowing that Gladio feels some form of regret for leaving all that time ago without a single word to Ignis.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Ignis turns away from the door, leaving Gladio behind as he walks to the kitchenette, restarting his efforts to put away the clean dishes that Prompto had left strewn across the counter when he realized he was going to be late for his new posting at the South Gates —the job at the farm five miles out fell through four weeks in and Prompto hadn’t quite adjusted to the new occupation he’s found.

A month back, Prompto went nonverbal after a firefight with scourged bandits during his shift, and his contract was dropped as the commissioner in charge of the security detail took none too kindly to the perceived weakness. Prompto forbade Ignis from pulling strings with the city’s employment management division, so Ignis had to stand by as Prompto tore himself apart for weeks. He struggled to find a posting that would both take him _and_ pay well enough to maintain his end of rent, and he placed the blame for his dismissal from the provision security detail squarely on his own shoulders. It was a poor combination. Thankfully, he managed to secure a post with the sanitation complex at the South Gates recently.

He forgot the starting time today, so the dishes were left unfinished when he had to run out the door. Ignis finishes them now. Gladio can do what he wants.

“I wasn’t looking for anything,” Gladio says. His steps are heavy, steady and familiar as they cross the studio in Ignis’s wake. “I was working. There’s a lot to be done out there and someone has to do it.”

“Must it be _you_ , Gladio?”

“They need everyone they can get, and not enough people have the skills to make it. I do. It only makes sense.”

Ignis stacks the bowls and slides them across the countertop toward Gladio. “Put these away. Far left cabinet.”

Gladio does without question, which is perhaps even more telling of the discomfort he feels than the way he is speaking.

“You could have come back at any time. Even Cor returns to the city monthly.”

Gladio does not reply.

“Prompto will be home at six. Do you plan on still being here when he returns, or should I refrain from getting his hopes up?”

“I saw him already.”

“Did you?” For a moment Ignis is surprised, before recalling Prompto’s current location. “You came by the South Gates, then.”

“Yeah. He pulled me aside on my way through.”

There is a lot not being said there. Knowing how angry Prompto has been over Gladio’s radio silence this past year, Ignis can only imagine what Prompto told him. Ignis almost wishes he had been witness to the discussion. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m staying the night in Lestallum. I’ll be here when he gets back.”

“One night? Generous of you,” Ignis finishes sorting the silverware into its carrying basket and drops the whole thing onto the counter. “Put that away. Second drawer on the right.”

“Damn, Iggy. Did you forget your _please and thank yous_ when I was gone?”

That does it. Ignis has tried his best to be civil enough, his irritation just barely visible to the outside observer, but he cannot stand this any longer. “All you had to do was call us.”

“Ig—”

“Stop it,” Ignis cuts him off, slamming his hand down on the counter. The stacked plates to his right rattle against one another. “Stop making excuses, Gladio. Stop. Were you truly needed down south, or were you just afraid of what was needed of you _here_? Now that Noctis has been gone for a year —more than, rather— have you realized that he isn’t going to be back to fix everything up again in no time at all? That you’re actually going to have to be around if we are to keep everything in place for his return? If we are to keep all of us in place for his return? Were you just afraid of having to watch two men disabled in the line of duty to our King go through their lives knowing that you didn’t —couldn’t— shield us from the hurts you have decided should have been yours to bear?”

Ignis is breathing hard. He had tried and failed to contact Gladio quite a few times in his absence, and had left the occasional voicemail to this effect. Hanging up after those had always felt somehow hollow, ineffective and purposeless with no guarantee that Gladio would actually listen to it.

Ignis has that guarantee now. He can’t deny the hot streak of righteous anger he feels as he basks in it.

“Well?” Ignis says, after the silence stretches for longer than he’d like. “What have you to say for yourself?”

“I was wrong,” Gladio replies. That is all for a moment, then: “I should never have left. Not for so long.”

It isn’t until his knuckles start to cramp that Ignis realizes he’s clutching the edge of the countertop in a vice grip. He loosens it, and flexes his fingers to try to usher away the sparks of pain in his knuckles.

“You shouldn’t have,” Ignis affirms. “Now, you have a choice. Either go back out there and destroy what little credibility you currently have left with me, or stay —with Prompto’s agreement. Do make your decision before tomorrow. I fear my patience has run somewhat thin these days. A sign of the times, don’t you think?”

* * *

If the apartment was cramped before, it feels ten times more so with Gladio sleeping on the couch. He plans on getting a roomshare with another hunter, finding someone through Cor who happens to essentially have an opposite schedule than Gladio’s own, new and closer-to-home hunting rotation, but the details won’t be in order for another few days. For now, they’re three to a room.

It doesn’t bother Ignis as much as he thought it might. Gladio has been a familiar presence to him, even in vulnerable moments like sleep, for nearly half of Ignis’s life. Prompto, however, is not taking it quite as well. Ignis can practically taste the tension in the air thicken and congeal into something sticky and bitter the moment Prompto realizes that he would be sleeping in the same room as someone _different_. It isn’t that he distrusts Gladio, exactly. Ignis is well aware of how fond Prompto is of the man, even when they disagree. The problem is that he is an unfamiliar element after all this time. One who, historically, does not react well to perceived weakness. It has been more than a year since Gladio witnessed firsthand the effects of Prompto’s post-traumatic stress. It is hard to say whether he will take any possible flare ups in stride, or if he will make things worse.

The first morning after their new arrangement, Prompto seems utterly lethargic. He won’t admit to it, but Ignis is fairly sure that Prompto didn’t sleep a wink. When Prompto makes coffee for Gladio, Ignis can hear all the half-drops Prompto does with the mugs, the clatter of them being put down on the counter too loud and haphazard to be fully intentional. Prompto trips over the leg of the coffee table after bringing Gladio his mug, and remains on the floor long enough that Ignis becomes mildly concerned that Prompto may be hurt.

“I’m good, I’m good,” Prompto pulls himself to his feet with the assistance of the tabletop. “Wow, I’m a real klutz today, huh?”

Ignis finds himself busy for most of the day. While he’d prefer to be home, keeping an eye —so to speak— on Gladio and Prompto, there’s been a mishap including a space heater, three children who followed their father to work, and more than half of the city’s paper-based scheduling system. It’s all hands on deck to salvage what can be recalled of the particulars before hunters and Glaives are double booked for hunting rotations or left of the schedule entirely. Ignis is one of those most familiar with the system, so he is crucial to the recovery of the system.

Administrative errors tend to have the interesting quality of either being entirely toothless, or devastating to an entire city’s infrastructure. Unfortunately, this occurrence leans more toward the latter than the former.

It is late when Ignis arrives back at the apartment. He hadn’t heard from Prompto nor Gladio all day, which was hopefully a good sign about how the two of them were holding up with one another.

They are friends after all, strained as things can be. Perhaps Ignis should be less of a pessimist.

“—and he looks up and asks me what I’m doing. I thought it was pretty clear, right? So I just sort of wave my hand at it because what does it look like, right? And he says, he tells me I’m fixing the wrong one. _The wrong one!_ Like, this dude waited until I was pretty much done tearing the paneling off this thing to tell me that? It took me like half an hour to figure out how to do that much.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! I mean, gods at least getting into the guts of that one made it way easier to figure out what was wrong with the one that was _actually_ broken but come on, man. This guy literally watched me dick around with a completely functional generator for like a full thirty minutes, I swear.”

Ignis enters the apartment and is welcomed with the sounds of calm conversation from the kitchenette, from which the scent of bulette n’ bean soup wafts across the apartment —leftovers from the night before. Ignis hopes that some was left for him, but he hadn’t cooked last night expecting a third person to appear from the wastes unannounced.

Prompto cuts his story short and greets Ignis, a smile evident in his voice. Ignis smiles back, and it seems almost as if the day had not been stressful at all. The strain of trying to manage several groups of people all trying to recover what information was missing —which is much harder than finding what information is present— for the better part of ten hours seems o melt away.

When did Ignis become so sentimental?

“We just heated up dinner like an hour ago,” Prompto says. “We saved some for you before we did though, it’s still in the fridge. Want me to get it out?”

“That would be lovely, thank you.” Ignis takes his leave for the moment and changes his clothes, hating the way the scent of the city —smoke and rot and plasmodium— would cling to him after spending the day outside of the apartment. When Ignis returns to the kitchenette, he hesitates by the counter dividing the cookspace from the rest of the apartment. Prompto is sitting in his usual spot to the far left. His heel is tapping against the leg of his chair, as usual. That leaves two chairs out of the three that are pulled up in a row. Ignis’s usual choice is the one in the center, usually tilted toward Prompto’s. There is a third chair however, and Ignis can’t be sure which one Gladio has taken.

Ignis listens for a moment, tilting his head in a way that hopefully reads as casual rather than as an intentional move to position his good ear toward the others. Prompto is well accustomed to that habit by now, but Gladio can be strange about this sort of thing.

Gladio clears his throat. “How are you doing, Iggy?”

The middle chair is free, then. Ignis takes a seat and Prompto pushes Ignis’s meal across the countertop toward him. “I will be glad once we have a reliable method to create and remotely access electronic schedules again. If I never have to recreate a physical system from the burned remains of another, it will be much too soon.”

“Sounds like a rough day,” Prompto says. “Need a drink? Gladio brought beer.”

They don’t usually keep alcohol in the apartment. Walking in to find Prompto drunk and hysteric one night, unable to tell where he was or who was in the apartment with him proved that it wasn’t a good idea to keep around. Ignis wasn’t one to drink in the first place, so he never felt the loss. Prompto hadn’t been happy, but gave their supply to the neighbors himself. Gladio wouldn’t know about any of that. “No, thank you.”

“More for me,” Gladio rumbles. There’s a pop and a hiss of escaping air. “Ignis I get, but when’d you start teetotalin’?”

“Just not feeling it anymore,” Prompto answers.

The food is good in the way that reheated soup usually is. Soup being left to sit in its own flavors overnight is more often than not an improvement, and Ignis is glad for it. “How were things here?”

“Not bad,” Gladio replies, probably not noticing how he cut off Prompto’s reply at the first syllable. “Got some logistics sorted out today. Should be able to get into my place tomorrow afternoon.”

“I didn’t have work, so I stayed here. Read a little bit,” Prompto falls silent for a moment. “Gladio brought some books with him and there wasn’t a lot else to do so… I dunno. Tried it out. They’re alright.”

“Just alright? If you wanted to read something else I have oth—”

“No, no! It was good I just… I don’t read very well. Don’t have the focus, right? Never did. S’why I don’t do it a lot. Can’t keep my mind on it without getting distracted.”

Gladio ribs Prompto a bit, and they launch into a conversation about the aforementioned novel that Prompto stumbles through with no lack of enthusiasm, though he does stumble with names and has to stop Gladio from spoiling events after a couple chapters. Ignis listens without contributing to the conversation himself, busying himself with his meal.

It’s nice to listen to them talk like this. It almost feels like they could be back in Insomnia, or maybe out on the road before the world turned to Hell.

Ignis tries to hold onto that feeling.

* * *

The night Gladio leaves for his new apartment, Prompto sleeps.

The night Gladio leaves for his new apartment, Prompto dreams.

The night Gladio leaves for his new apartment, Prompto wakes up and his breath rasps, muffled behind what Ignis assumes to be a hand pressed tight to his mouth. It’s quiet in the night but audible enough to Ignis who has still been awake, imagining he could see moonlight shift across the walls.

“Prompto?”

The breathing stutters. Stills. Prompto makes a noise in the back of his throat. A whimper.

Ignis sits up slowly, extracting himself from his blankets so he has the freedom to turn toward the other bed. He says Prompto’s name again, barely above a whisper.

“Who…?” Prompto’s voice is strained. Choked, like there is a hand grasping his neck. Like he can’t get enough air and what air he does have is being forced out of him by a blow to the chest. “Who’s there…?”

“It’s me,” Ignis says. “It’s Ignis. We’re in Lestallum, in an apartment we own together.”

He gives the date and the approximate time. He doesn’t want to prompt his phone to read it aloud, so Ignis gives it his best guess.

Prompto doesn’t respond, stuttering a few sounds before giving up on it. He shifts on his own bed, and Ignis hears the springs in the mattress creak.

Ignis wonders if it would be better if he crossed the space between their beds. Extended a hand to Prompto. Safe, physical contact. A way to ground himself.

Would it just make things worse? Ignis mulls it over but can’t predict it. Prompto’s comfort with touch changes from episode to episode, and Ignis has no way of knowing what tonight is like without Prompto directly confirming one thing or the other. Ignis decides to plainly ask when Prompto speaks instead.

“Where are we really?”

Ignis, taken aback, pauses. He tells Prompto again where they are.

“Don’t lie to me,” Prompto groans deep in his chest. “You’ve done enough. You’ve done it enough. Just stop it already. Just stop it. I get it, okay? I get it.”

Ignis scoots back across his bed, awkward and clambering as he stands up, tries to appear non-threatening. He walks to the close wall and flicks on the light using the switch there. Ignis can sense the change, but there isn’t enough of one to see anything more than impressions. _Brightness, orange. Upward._

Prompto makes another wordless sound, tight with pain. Ignis can’t be sure if it is physical or mental, real or imagined. He returns to their beds, sitting once again on the side of his own farthest from Prompto and then moving slowly over the top once he is sitting down. He doesn’t want to stand directly in front of Prompto, to tower over him in any manner that could be seen as dangerous. Ignis never considered himself a large man— simply a tall, bean-pole sort, but he doesn’t know if that’s enough of a resemblance to hurt Prompto’s momentarily fragile mind even more.

“What are you doing?” Prompto says, the words low and cut out of another initially wordless sound that seemed coaxed out his chest unwillingly. “Just get it over with. I know why you’re here, okay? It’s not scary or… fuck, oh shit. It’s not… don’t look at me like that, I… it’s… your mysterious bullshit doesn’t work anymore, alright? Just… shit, shit. Alright. Just do it already.”

Ignis breathes slowly. How can he convince Prompto who he is, if Prompto thinks he is going to lie? Sometimes saying something that only Ignis would know works, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes Prompto decides that not only is Ignis not himself, but the whole scenario, Ignis being present and attempting to help, is imagined. A way to cope with the _other_ hallucinations he’s experiencing simultaneously, the ones he rarely names. He doesn’t have to name them. Ignis knows.

Tonight, all Ignis can do is be present as Prompto shakes and mutters half-protests and demands for Ignis to drop the act. It happens sometimes, when nothing can really be done other than waiting for it all to pass. It always does, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Knowing that it will end does not ease the pain as it strikes.

“I’m sorry,” Prompto’s voice shakes. He hasn’t spoken for some time, and if it weren’t for the lack of movement —the sounds of Prompto laying down and drawing his blankets over himself— Ignis could have almost convinced himself that Prompto had fallen asleep.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Ignis reassures him, risking a gentle approach to Prompto’s bedside now that Prompto seems to have recognized that Ignis is truly himself. “Are you alright?”

Prompto laughs wetly. “No.”

That was a stupid question, in retrospect.

“Do you wanna… sit down?” Prompto asks after a moment. Ignis nods, and takes a seat on Prompto’s rumpled bedspread. Prompto sits beside him. They aren’t touching, but Ignis can almost feel the warmth radiating from Prompto’s skin.

“Is there anything I can—”

“—no,” Prompto laughs again, a little steadier. “No, you’ve done enough. I mean, fuck. Not in a bad way. I don’t mean that in a bad way, you know that, right? No, it’s just… it’s enough. It’s enough for you to be here. I… thank you. And sorry. I know it’s shitty.”

Only Prompto could apologize in times like this, as if his hard-earned and sharp-toothed trauma is an imposition on Ignis’s life. As if Ignis wouldn’t forgo a million nights of sleep to comfort Prompto while his mind tears itself apart in fear of events long passed. As if Ignis wouldn’t hold Prompto’s hand, and remind him that he is safe and whole and in the company of friends, and kiss his furrowed brow as he tries to pick reality out of a spiraling, disastrous amalgamate of memories and dreams, violation and helplessness and hands he can’t see.

“It doesn’t bother me to be with you in times like this,” Ignis considers his choice of words. “You are never an inconvenience to me, nor a burden.”

Ignis wishes he could say what he truly feels, how much he wants to spend every night at Prompto’s side. How he wishes he could hold Prompto in his arms and let him know just how much he is loved. He still fears though, that it would hurt Prompto more than help. That Prompto would go with anything that Ignis asks for out of misplaced fear or a sense of debt. If anything more is to come of their relationship —their friendship, rather— Ignis can’t imagine feeling comfortable in it if Prompto isn’t the one to initiate.

Perhaps Ignis is being infantilizing. Prompto can surely take care of himself, and is more than capable of standing up for himself, of not following along with things that will hurt if he knows it will hurt. Ignis can’t help the worry though, the knowledge of how Prompto views himself in relation to Ignis and Gladio and Noctis. Capable and strong, yes. Worthy of being present, of being involved in their lives? At this point, on all but the worst days he seems to believe it. But he also sees himself as irrevocably lesser, in ways that he rarely defines. Inferior because of his origins, or his varying capabilities, or the way his brain turns on him and makes his reality waver and reform in the shape of their enemy’s touch. Lowly, broken, and defiled.

Gods, if only Ignis could help Prompto understand that he is none of those things. If only he could make Prompto see.

“Well,” Prompto clears his throat. “I… okay. Um. Thank you. I… still. I’m sorry. You can go back to sleep. I’m good now. It’s all good.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Going back to sleep, yourself?”

“Oh. Not yet. I’m tired, I guess but. Not yet. I don’t think… yeah.”

“Would you like me to stay up with you?” Ignis asks, narrowly avoiding twitching away when he feels Prompto lean to the side and press himself against Ignis. Prompto doesn’t respond for a little bit, just breathing in time with Ignis. Prompto’s hair tickles Ignis’s chin.

“If you’d want, I’d… I’d like that.”

Prompto falls asleep right there after some time, his cheek still pressed into Ignis’s chest. Ignis dares not stand to turn out the lights, so he carefully leans back until both he and Prompto are laying down on top of Prompto’s bedspread, and falls asleep with the overhead lights still casting a barely-detectable orangey glow over the both of them.

* * *

“Are you doing alright?”

Ignis tilts his head, thinking over the nonsequiteur. “Yes, I suppose I am. Is there… anything amiss?”

“No,” Prompto taps the tabletop with both hands in a familiar, seemingly-random syncopation that Ignis has committed to memory. That exact rhythm is one that Ignis has heard many times now, and Ignis isn’t sure if it means anything, but he has unintentionally learned to recognize it regardless. “I was just thinking… you’ve been out of your uh, medication? For a long time. Doesn’t that mess with you?”

“My medication?”

“Your shots. Your… testosterone?”

Oh. Ignis has tried not to think about it too much. The understandable lack of supplements and non-essential medications in the apocalypse —and quite a few essential medications, despite the efforts of scavengers and the few compounding pharmacists that have made the single Lestallum pharmacy their home— has led to Ignis undergoing an odd, stilted sort of second puberty at 23. Hormone blockers and then later testosterone had spared Ignis much of his body’s disagreement with his sense of self, but now he can’t do anything about the monthly bleeding and the slight filling of his chest. He has been spared anything too drastic, either because of genetic luck or perhaps the effects of having been through a testosterone-driven puberty first, but there are changes nonetheless. They aren’t too noticeable or hindering most days, but Ignis has begun to feel at odds with his body in a way he hadn’t since he first realized what he was.

“It does… mess with me. I’m managing, though. It’s not too much of a bother.”

“Are you sure?” Prompto continues on without waiting for the answer. “Because I know that that stuff can really bother people, and like I haven’t noticed any changes really but I wasn’t sure if maybe you were…? And I know what it’s like when you’re in a body that sort of sucks to you… not that I’ve ever been through what you have! It’s not like, gender stuff. You know, I don’t mean to say that I, uh—”

“It’s alright, Prompto. I understand. And I’m doing well,” Ignis feels his chest suffuse with warmth. Rarely does anyone check in on him outside of the matter of his sight, which is a loss Ignis has long since come to terms with and adapted around. “Thank you.”

“Oh I— yeah. Of course. No problem.”

“How are the South Gates?”

“Not bad, now. Did you hear about what happened this morning?”

Ignis racks his brain for any rumors of odd happenings from earlier in the day, but if there was anything unusual, news of it hadn’t reached the City Centre before the end of Ignis’s shift. “I don’t believe I did.”

“Damn, really? And I thought you knew everything,” Prompto nudges Ignis in the ribs. “So, I was outside the sanitation tent waiting for the next group of hunters or ‘Guard or Glaives or whoever to come back, and I hear this _wild_ crashing noise, and I turn around and a _mahanaga_ has busted its whole head through the top of the gate! Like, that ol’ Sefiros pickup they got stacked on top of the blue four door? Well, I mean I guess you haven’t seen it but you know how the gates are made and all that, yeah? So it’s literally eaten _through_ the truck bed and now it’s big nasty head is poking out into the Gate and before anyone can do anything, she turns all the gate guards into frogs!”

Prompto excitedly lays out the story of his daring one-man stand-off with the mahanaga, complete with sound effects and exuberant hand gestures that Ignis is only aware of because of how often Prompto’s hands brushed against Ignis’s bicep when Prompto threw his arms too wide. Ignis can’t shake the growing sense of pride in how well Prompto holded his own and prevented the mahanaga from entering the city proper until reinforcements arrived. Prompto has come a very long way since the first time he held a proper gun and stood shaky-kneed and pale in front of Ignis as he was given a primer on how to use it. Ignis has been well-aware of Prompto’s impressive capabilities for a long time, but that doesn’t change how impressive Prompto’s growth has been. He had only been in training for six weeks or so before their departure from Insomnia, and in just a few months became indistinguishable in skill from any other Crownsguard or Glaive.

He’s come so far.

“Hey,” Prompto taps Ignis on the wrist. “You zoning out on me? Coulda told me to wrap it up.”

“I was listening,” Ignis assures him. Ignis truly had been, even if he was somewhat preoccupied with other thoughts on the side. “You did a great thing today. You should be proud.”

“Oh I… I guess,” Prompto laughs, the quiet sort of thing that’s half self-deprecation. “I dunno, I figured it’d be a cool story, the way the mahanaga absolutely crushed that Sefiros. I wasn’t really thinking about my part of it.”

“You prevented a daemon from reaching the city with no help but yourself and a pistol. That is not something just anyone could have done.”

“There’s plenty of one man armies out there. I just got lucky, it was stuck in the truck half the time, you know? Like fish in a barrel.”

“A mahanaga is a particularly powerful demon. It takes a team of four or more to take one down, usually. There’s a reason that they are never on hunt flyers for solo outings. To stand against one on your own is typically suicide.”

Prompto pulls back a little. He had previously been leaning close to Ignis, one shoulder lightly touching Ignis’s while Prompto’s hand rested near the wrist he had touched before to make sure that Ignis was paying attention. “Well. It was nothing, really. It was stuck.”

Ignis isn’t sure why he does it. He barely even realizes what he’s doing as he pushes back his chair, stands, and takes one of Prompto’s hands in his own. Gently, enough so that Prompto could take his hand back if he wanted to with no effort.

He doesn’t.

“Prompto,” Ignis says. He squeezes Prompto’s hand, a quick _one-two_ that Prompto returns, seemingly by reflex. “Please understand. I do not flatter needlessly, nor do I lie to make others feel better. I am not trying to make you feel as if you have accomplished a great task when you have not. You did something incredibly brave today, at great risk to yourself. You took your posting at sanitation because it wasn’t supposed to bring you back to combat, and you still found it in yourself to fight and win, because you needed to. You—”

“That was a fluke,” Prompto demurs. “I froze up every other time. Couldn’t talk, I got so freaked. I just got lucky today. That’s all.”

Ignis brings up his other hand, so that he is grasping Prompto’s between two of his own. “You’re making _progress_ , Prompto. You’re doing well.”

“Not well enough,” Prompto yanks his hand away and steps to the side. “Don’t baby me, Ignis. I’m supposed to be _better_ than this.”

Prompto turns on his heel and leaves the kitchenette, the floor beneath his feet creaking with every step as he makes his way into the bathroom —the one truly private area in the apartment— and loudly locks the door behind him.

The shower sputters on after a moment. Ignis stands in the kitchenette, hands loose at his sides.

* * *

A light knock on the corner of Ignis’s desk. A quiet shuffle of the feet. A sigh.

“Hey. Can we uh… talk?”

Ignis takes his single earbud out and glances over —so to speak— at Prompto, who is lingering at the left edge of his desk, a small workspace away from work. Up until recently he hadn’t used it for much more than going over his audio notes, but someone managed to find a screen reader that he was able to take with him rather than leave at the administrative building, so now he is capable of doing much more from home if he so desires.

“What is it?”

Prompto dithers for a moment. He then pulls up a chair, an extra with a wobbly leg, and sits beside Ignis. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Nothing important,” Ignis pushes his phone and its small tangle of earbuds further away from himself, hopefully emphasizing his point. “Just notes from yesterday’s agriculture meeting. They sent them over late.”

“Oh. Anything interesting?”

“You wanted to talk to me about the state of our agriculture?”

Ignis is well aware that that’s not what Prompto is here for, but it serves to loosen Prompto up a little, as he laughs quietly.

“Nah, I don’t know a thing about any of that, and it’s probably for the best. You know I still think about that cactus? Eivor? Miss that dumb thing.“

Ah. The cactus Prompto left in Insomnia. It has been some time since it came up. Ignis remembers.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

Prompto starts tapping at the desk. _One-two three, four-ie-and, one-two three, four-ie-and-a_. A rhythm in ⅞ time. Off-balance. “I dunno. I’m being sort of… stupid? I just. I think that maybe sometimes we… ah man. I’m probably just seeing things that aren’t there, right? Not like anyone would ever spring for this loser.”

Ignis’s heart starts to beat a little faster against his better judgement. It almost sounds like…

“You aren’t a loser,” Ignis responds, near-automatically at this point. Though Prompto rarely acknowledges it, Ignis has become quite used to quickly contradicting Prompto’s self-deprecation.

“Sure,” Prompto clears his throat. And then he doesn’t say anything more for a moment. Two. Ignis is beginning to think that maybe Prompto has decided not to say anything after all when Prompto speaks again, oddly timid. “Ignis. Are you sick of me?”

“Of course not. Have I done anything to make you think that I am?”

Ignis is not going to say that living with Prompto is always the easiest. They squabble, they don’t always mesh, Prompto’s triggers occasionally conflict with Ignis’s need for tactile input after waking to darkness after a nightmare, but they are as happy as they could be when mutually traumatized and living in the middle of a slow, devastating apocalypse. Ignis isn’t sick of Prompto. He’s one of the best things about life in a very real, literal hellscape. He’s bright and compassionate and quietly comfortable in a way that no one else is, not afraid to acknowledge and work _with_ Ignis’s blindness rather than work _around_ , neither pitying Ignis nor ignoring his limitations. He lashes out sometimes, when he’s vulnerable and turned belly-up by flashbacks and fear, but he apologizes when the pain has passed. He checks in on Ignis, making sure that no damage has been done. He cares. He tries.

He’s so much stronger than he thinks he is.

Ignis cares for him so much it hurts.

“No, no. I don’t think so. I just… I wanted to check before I said anything stupid. Y’know?”

Prompto’s rapping on the desk ceases. He takes a deep breath, audibly.

Ignis waits.

“Um. Can I…?”

There’s a light touch on Ignis’s left wrist, gentle on the stretch of scars arcing over his skin starting from his middle finger and extending up his arm and beyond. Ignis isn’t quite sure what is being asked of him, but he turns his hand over, palm-up. Prompto slides his fingertips up from Ignis’s wrist until their hands are pressed palm to palm, like they’re comparing the lengths of their fingers. Prompto’s are shorter than Ignis’s and thinner. Slightly cool around the fingertips, like Prompto doesn’t get good circulation to his extremities. He probably doesn’t. Ignis knows that Prompto has some sort of permanent damage to his arms and back after being held up by the wrists for so long in Gralea.

They sit like that for a few seconds, before Prompto shifts slightly and laces his fingers through Ignis’s own.

It is hardly the first time they have held hands. When Prompto can tolerate touch, they have done so quite a few times after Prompto has recovered from an episode. He has even offered his hand to Ignis himself a few times when Ignis has experienced his fair share of nightmares.

This feels different.

This _is_ different.

Isn’t it…?

Ignis’s chest is tight with anticipation. He wishes so much that he could read what Prompto is thinking in his face, the angle of his mouth, the jut of his chin. Does he still nervously bite his bottom lip? He must. Ignis has no way of knowing for sure.

“I uh… shit, sorry. Give me a minute,” Prompto says. He squeezes Ignis’s hand briefly, and Ignis returns the gesture. “I just wanted to say sorry. For last night. That’s uh. Yeah. That’s all. I just was thinking and I was… really rude. I’m sorry, man. I know I shouldn’t be taking my shit out on you. I try not to but sometimes… yeah. Hah, I’m a big ol’ wreck, but I uh. I don’t wanna make you deal with any more than you have to. Not when we... yeah.”

It takes considerable effort for Ignis to school his face. He could have sworn that Prompto had been about to say something else, but decided against it at the last minute. It isn’t exactly out of character, but it takes a moment for the apology to sink in, occupied as Ignis is with the thwarted possibilities of _other_ sorts of confessions.

He hadn’t been imagining it, had he?

Ignis isn’t usually that fanciful or illogical. He wouldn’t conjure something that wasn’t there, he is still well-trained in reading social cues and deducing intentions through them regardless of the lack of a major sense involved in the practice.

“It’s quite alright,” Ignis breathes out, measuring it so it doesn’t come out too terribly much like a sigh. He can’t be absolutely certain of Prompto’s intentions, and Ignis is still dedicated to having Prompto be the one to come forward, if there is indeed anything to come forward about. “I understand, and I appreciate the apology. Are you feeling better today?”

“Huh? Yeah, I am. Thanks.”

They are still holding hands.

* * *

The first thing that happens is Ignis’s screen reader falling silent midword. He frowns, rechecks the connection between his headphones and the auxiliary port on the side of the device, and finds it to be secure. He waggles the mouse and sighs when the screen reader fails to inform him what the cursor is hovering over. He pulls off his headphones and pauses.

The telltale hum of the bulky computer tower sitting on the right edge of Ignis’s desk in his administrative office is absent. The computer has turned off entirely. A cursory press of the power button yields no results. It is incredibly unlikely that the computer unplugged _itself_ , and no one else is in the room.

Did the power go out?

Ignis doesn’t often keep the lights in his office on, as he doesn’t need them and its a waste of the city’s limited electricity to keep them running if he can’t benefit from them. He makes his way over to the switch by his door, and flicks it on and off a few times.

No change, however slight, occurs.

A power outage, then. Ignis can only hope that it hasn’t affected the rest of the city. The outer lights on the walls and at the gates run on generators, but there are plenty of spaces within Lestallum that may get dark enough to allow for daemons spawning in the absence of full electricity service.

Seeing as Ignis is largely incapable of continuing work without his screen reader, he packs up his things and gets ready to leave his office. Perhaps he can be of some use with the teams trying to amend the electrical issue. If not, he’s sure Prompto would be glad to see Ignis home early, as long as there aren’t any issues with daemons springing up incity. If that happens, he and Prompto may find their hands much fuller than they’d like.

Ignis wasn’t even supposed to be at work today, but he came in anyway as there were a few things he left unfinished at the office after being unexpectedly pulled out the day before to help test some new accessibility measures in the community infirmary. He isn’t even sure if anyone is aware that Ignis is in, as he hadn’t spoken to anyone on the way through the admin building into his office.

It isn’t until Ignis is mere steps from the door that he realizes something has gone terribly wrong. Someone, multiple people, have begun to scream. Ignis lunges for the door handle, only to find his palm struck with a terrible pain where it touches the metal, a stinging ache that spreads quickly. Ignis reels back, instinctively pulling the injured hand toward his chest.

Something is crackling beyond the door, and an acrid smell has begun to filter into the room. Ignis, his heart pounding in trepidation, gently presses the back of his hand to the wood of the door. It’s hot.

Fire. The building is on fire.

The noise of it grows exponentially now that Ignis is listening, the distant crash of something collapsing, the scattered screams of other workers as they try to escape.

For a brief moment, Ignis has the illogical thought to call the fire brigade. The number for the Insomnian fire brigade had been imprinted in Ignis’s mind since he was old enough to be able to recognize numbers on a telephone, as was the case with most children. There is no Insomnian fire brigade, anymore.

Does Lestallum have one? Ignis is sure that it must, surely a city this size can’t have stood for this long without one, but Ignis can’t for the life of him remember if they can be reached by phone. Maybe not, given the apocalypse and all.

The room grows warmer as Ignis stumbles to where he is fairly sure a window is set into the far wall of his office, the one facing out into an alley. He finds it and struggles to find the locking mechanisms at the top of the bottom pane for what feels like hours. He wrenches them into the unlocked position, the poorly maintained latches resistant to movement after being left alone for at _least_ the length of Ignis’s occupation of the office. Ignis opens the window and…

Is there a fire escape?

He leans out, his waist bent over the window sill, reaching for any sign of railings or fastenings to indicate that there’s a metal landing outside. Nothing. Ignis levers himself back inside, crouching low and making his way over to the desk, where he takes up a paperweight —cool and smooth in Ignis’s hand, a rough disk of river rock that Prompto once picked up from one of the many rivers he and Ignis and the rest used to frequent— and ventures back to the window, dropping the heavy stone over the sill and listening for an impact.

There is no fire escape. The stone lands with a clatter somewhere below, some four stories, eighteen meters. Ignis is trapped. There is no safe way out of the office, and the fire is blazing just outside his door.

The only way that Ignis could hope to escape is by jumping from the window, but falling from that height only affords him a mere fifty percent chance of survival. Possibly less, as he can’t see the ground coming and adjust his body in the air accordingly. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had an aptitude for warping. He had never managed it, only warping when pulled along by Noct’s hand wrapped around his wrist.

The room is getting hotter, the smell of smoke more choking. Ignis drops to the floor beneath the open window, pulling the collar of his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose. He pulls out his phone, cradling it in his uninjured hand, and then… what? What is he going to do? Who is he going to call?

Ignis swallows. Slides further down the wall to avoid smoke that must be billowing into the room by now through the cracks in the door. The whole building seems to creak around him, and there are more sounds of collapse somewhere several rooms to the west.

 _Should_ he try to jump from the window? Would he survive? What would happen if he didn’t? What would happen to Noctis, when he returns to find Ignis long gone? What would happen to Gladio? What would happen to…

What would happen to Prompto? Who would hold his hands in the dead of night, who would guide him out of the dark visions of a past he can’t shake, who would help him out of bed when it seems pointless to him to wake up and keep trying, who would take care of the little cactus Ignis has paid far too much of his personal funds to keep in a tiny corner of Greenhouse 7 in the hopes that one day the sun will rise and he can press its little ceramic pot into Prompto’s hands and tell him that it’s his, who would—

Ignis tries to call someone, tries to call him, but he can’t get out anything intelligible enough to navigate his phone through voice command. He tries to follow the narration as he taps around the screen literally blindly, but he can’t make out the words. The roar of the inferno eating through the building is drowning everything out, and yet is somehow muted at the same time. Everything seems to slide back and away, like the world is a radio playing in a building next door. Ignis’s hand hurts. His hands hurt. His lungs ache, his skin is lighting in excruciating trails along his fingers, his arms, his face. It hurts. It hurts and it hurts and he’s doing this for… he’s doing this for…

The waves crash over the altar, coating him with water that does nothing to stifle the flames erupting from his body, coating his burning wounds in salt that only adds to the agony. Ignis is burning from the inside out, his very soul scraped out of him and evaluated and found _wanting_. He is good enough to do his duty, but not good enough to live through it. He will burn until he is dead, and it will have to be enough. He staggers, his grip tighter than it should be as he tries to raise his daggers once again. The fight is over but his heart still beats which means he hasn’t fulfilled his purpose. Not yet.

He almost fears that if he uncurls his fingers, they will crumble away from his body, blackened to cinders as they must be.

_Truly a pity._

Ignis is falling apart, Ignis is tearing to pieces, he can’t breathe with his lungs shriveled and blackened within his chest, he can’t move with his muscles carbonized, fused to his bones, his cartilage hardened to wire. He has burned to nothing, surely there is nothing left, and still he stands. Still the rain beats down on him. Still the pain continues. He can’t win. He can’t win, and Noctis is going to die, and everything will be for nothing. All that they have suffered at the hands of the Empire, all that they have lost, it won’t mean a damned thing.

A hand brushes against Ignis’s cheek, mocking in its gentleness, before gliding down past his chin to wrap around the side of his neck. His charred skin screams, his nerves —gods, shouldn’t they be deadened by the flame— desperately trying to alert him to the fact that he is grievously injured, as if he isn’t horribly aware of the damage. Fingers press into his windpipe, and he can’t see, he can’t raise his daggers, he can hardly believe he is still conscious at all.

 _Wouldn’t it be interesting if this were your end? You could hardly stop me, such as you are. I wonder what your King of Kings would think, if you were to perish to something so_ common _as a simple… squeeze…_

The grip around his throat tightens. There is no air. There is no air and everything is burning. When did the fire start again? Are the Lucii trying to give Ignis one last chance? Why?

Would it even help?

It hurts.

Something piercingly loud explodes to Ignis’s right, a strange sharp pop magnified to the point of pain. His ears ring.

“Ignis!”

The suffocating hand departs, but the lack of air remains. The burning remains, the heat, the smoke. Ignis is… he is not standing. He is on the ground, his back pressed against something solid. He must have fallen. When?

When did it stop raining?

“Ignis, oh gods. Ignis, hey. You scared the fucking shit out of me, gods. You have to get up, okay? You’ve gotta stand up, we gotta get out of here.”

New hands touch him now, not the same as the one before, pulling up at his shoulders, his upper arms, his torso. Forcing him to his feet. Ignis is barely aware of moving his own legs to support his weight beneath him.

Where…?

“That’s good. That’s good! We’re doing great. We’ll be okay. We’re good, don’t worry. I’ve got you, but you gotta hold onto me too, okay? Just in case. It’s gonna be a squeeze, you know the drill. Just hold on tight.”

Ignis’s breath shudders as he draws in air, the grit of ash and gods know what else thick in his nose, his mouth, coating the back of his throat. He is pressed to someone’s side, and he numbly moves one arm to loosely wrap around the body supporting most of his weight.

“Alrighty, don’t let go!”

The popping sound again, and then Ignis is shattered apart into particles and recondensed so quickly that he can’t process the shift, only the change in temperature and angle as he’s lowered back to the ground. It’s cooler, the stone nearly cold against his skin. Not wet, though.

It’s not the altar.

Is he…?

“Holy shit, we’re okay. You’re okay. Fuck, gods damnit. I love you so much, you know that? Gods, you can’t do this to me. I can’t fuckin’ take it man. I only got so much in me. No more fires, fucking Six.”

_I love you so much…_

The sound turns over in Ignis’s head. It feels important, but the pain is so much. He can’t comprehend it, not with the… no. How hurt is he? The sea… he wasn’t there, was he? But then, the fire… where was the fire?

“—can you spare it?”

“I believe so. It’ll have to be some of the Glaive stuff though, so not as strong as what you’d be used to. We don’t have enough with the royal touch to give out for anything more than… well, you know the type.”

“That’s fine, that’s good. That’s great! Just... now, please? Now’s good, can we have it now?”

“One minute, kid. Cato’s got ‘em, he’s coming over. Short one, with the braids in back. Yeah, him.”

Ignis is laying flat on his back, his head cradled on top of something warm. A hand is pressed over his chest, roughly over his heart.

Everything hurts. He coughs, and it feels like his airways have been scrubbed down with sandpaper. His mouth tastes of blood.

“Gods, thank you,” a pause. The warmth beneath him shifts. There’s a quiet sound of shattering, and coolness spreads through Ignis’s body, taking the pain with it. He coughs again, once, twice, and something inside him knits back together. He can take deep lungfuls of air, so he does over and over again, near-gasping.

“Hey, you’re alright. You’re safe, I gotcha outta there. You’re gonna be alright. Just keep breathing for me. That’s good. We’re okay.”

_Hey, hold onto me, yeah?_

That’s right.

_I won’t let you fall._

The same voice.

_Take it one step at a time and we’ll be okay, got it?_

Ever since then, Ignis has held that feeling in his heart, wondering if it would be worth the hurt he may cause to try to seek more.

_We’ll be okay._

That’s right.

They’ll be okay.

Ignis breathes, and Prompto pushes Ignis’s singed hair out of his face.

There’s a hand pressed over Ignis’s heart. Ignis reaches for it, placing his own over top.

They’ll be okay.

* * *

“How did you do it?”

Prompto strains the pasta into the sink, not responding until the noise of water rushing down the drain ceases. “How’d I get you outta the admin building?”

“Yes.”

Ignis has had most of the story related to him by now, pieced together by numerous accounts of the incident from various sources. Some sort of mechanical error in the utility room on the third floor of Lestallum’s administrative building had started a fire which spread quickly through the interior, filled as it was with veritable libraries of printed records and wooden furniture. Neither his coworkers nor the team of hunters evacuating the building had been aware of Ignis’s presence as he wasn’t scheduled to come in, hadn’t told anyone —barring Prompto— that he was going to, and hadn’t crossed paths with anyone else on the trek from entrance to office. When the other employees were evacuated and everyone seemed to be accounted for, little thought was put toward continuing a rescue effort in other parts of the building. The fire brigade —there _is_ one in Lestallum after all, even if it is rather diminutive— focused instead on attempting to extinguish the building. It was largely a lost cause, though they hadn’t been aware at the time.

No one would have saved Ignis, trapped as he was in his office between death by flames or by impact on the pavement outside. No one knew he needed to be saved. No one except Prompto, who had seen the flames from the window of their apartment. He had been home for the day, and heard a commotion in the streets outside. When he looked out, the administrative building —just visible past another set of buildings that Prompto had never bothered to learn the function of— was ablaze. Knowing that Ignis was there, Prompto rushed out to the streets and into the throng of hunters, Glaives, fire brigaders, and survivors milling around one another a distance away from the inferno.

Ignis was nowhere to be found.

Prompto knew where Ignis’s office was from the outside, having once cajoled him into waving at Prompto out the window while he was at work and Prompto was on his way to his own post. He made his way to the familiar window and then… that was all Ignis knew.

The story comes out in stops and starts, with Prompto backtracking here and there when he got caught up on a detail or forgot something. The missing conclusion to the story is drawn out bit by bit, and Ignis hangs onto every word.

Having no other way to safely get into the building considering the lower floors were drowned in fire, Prompto drew his gun and shot through the open window, hoping that Ignis was low enough to the ground that he wouldn’t be struck. Prompto squeezed his eyes shut and felt the trail of the bullet, willing himself along its path until he shattered into crystal, warping up and through the building to land in the middle of Ignis’s burning office. The usual pang of motion sickness and disorientation hit, but Prompto still staggered over to where Ignis was lying beneath the window, skin tinged red from the heat, dissociating, and deprived of oxygen from all the smoke. Prompto managed to get Ignis to his feet and warp them back out to the ground before summoning Glaive medics and convincing them to give Ignis a potion to heal the damage he had sustained while disconnected from the events around him.

He said something while cradling Ignis’s head in his lap. He doesn’t mention it in his recollection of it all, but Ignis remembers. He knows what it was that he heard. He says it now, and the half-whisper of it seems very loud in the sudden quiet of their kitchenette.

“You said that you loved me.”

Prompto freezes. He had been pressed against Ignis’s side as he returned the pasta to the pot on the stove, ready for Ignis to pour over the sauce he had been —figuratively— keeping an eye on. Ignis feels him tense and tries very hard not to regret bringing it up.

“Ah… yeah. I… you don’t have to say anything. I didn’t think you heard me; you were so… out of it. I’ve been there, y’know? I know that sometimes you just don’t really connect with what’s going on. When I said that… eugh. Don’t worry about it, man. I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Did you mean it?”

“...what?”

“Did you mean what you said?”

“Oh,” Prompto makes a noise in the back of his throat, something between a laugh and groan and sigh. “You don’t have to worry about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” Ignis places the saucepan down on the burner, which is set to its lowest temperature. He turns to face Prompto fully, and the soft shuffle of socked feet on linoleum tells him that Prompto has done the same. “Did you mean it?”

“Yeah. I did,” Prompto touches Ignis’s forearm, an aborted movement that Ignis can’t discern the purpose of as Prompto withdraws it too quickly. “I know I’m not really… well. You know. I’m not really worth all of that. I know what I am, and things like me don’t get to have that sort of thing. ‘Specially not with guys like you. You don’t have to say anything. I get it.”

Ignis tries to interject, but Prompto is continuing before Ignis can get a word out.

“Like seriously. I’m not made for that. Love, I guess. My parents abandoned me as soon as I could realistically pretend that they hadn’t, I had no friends for nearly all my life except for Noct, and it _still_ feels like a miracle sometimes that he’d ever give me a second glance, and relationships? Romance? I don’t get that. I got… _him_. I got him, and I got pain, and when I was trapped there in fuckin’ Gralea, I finally was given all the proof I’d ever need to know that I’m not allowed to have anything _but_ that. But the things he did to me. That’s the love I deserve, you know? It just makes sense.”

“Prompto—”

“Shit, I don’t mean to say all that to make you feel bad for me or something. It’s just the way it is, right? I just mean that like, I know you don’t feel the way I do. You literally _can’t_ ; that’s not how this works. So you don’t have to feel bad about it. We can just forget it, right?”

Ignis holds his hand out to Prompto. Not demanding, just offering it. He can feel it shaking but doesn’t have the will to steady it. The motion seems to startle Prompto out of his self-deprecation, as he pauses. They both stand in silence for a moment before slowly, as if he may be reprimanded for daring to take the invitation, Prompto places his hand into Ignis’s.

“I love you, too.”

Prompto’s grasp on Ignis’s hand tightens. “You don’t have to do that. Don’t lie to make me feel better.”

“I’m not,” Ignis says. He pulls Prompto forward by the hand until they are standing close enough together for Ignis to feel Prompto’s presence in the inches of air between them. “I truly love you.”

And so they stand in the kitchen, deconstructing the ways in which they have loved one another and concealed it for far too long. Prompto, for fear of not deserving it. For fear of being too inhuman, too sullied, too broken for something like love. Ignis, for fear of influencing Prompto into something he is too afraid to refuse. For fear of crushing the tentative life they shared together, one bright spot in the endless dark of the apocalypse. They press closer to one another as they pull their life together apart and sort it into recognizable shapes, recontextualizing months, _years_ of too many things left unsaid for far too long. Prompto cries, and apologizes for crying, and apologizes for apologizing. Ignis cards his hand through Prompto’s hair as Prompto tucks himself neatly against Ignis’s body, his head fitting just perfectly under Ignis’s chin.

The world is still dark. The daemons still prowl the night. The human race is dwindling down to cities, no longer traipsing continents with reckless abandon. Nightmares, hallucinations, anxiety, depression, dissociation, and the trauma that Ignis and Prompto carry are not erased by this. The evil and pain in the world does not cease because they have one another.

But to hold each other now, to love and to allow themselves to be loved, to lean in for a first kiss and a second and a third, to revel in the reality that maybe, something good can still rise from an existence rife with too much sorrow to bear…

A new feeling blossoms within Ignis’s chest, tentative but bright, sheltered in the same hollow of his ribs in which his feelings for Prompto reside.

The world isn’t a lost cause. The sun will rise again. The daemons will fall. The plants will regrow. The people will return to their broken cities and rebuild. Prompto will wake up someday to realize that he is no longer counting shadows in corners and pushing away hands that he cannot see. Ignis will find that the smell of a campfire no longer makes his skin itch. It may not be perfect, but it’s still a good life. They can still have a good life. The world may just end up okay after all.

Hope. It’s a funny thing.

The sauce burns.

It’s okay.

**Author's Note:**

>  _When I am dead I won't join their ranks  
>  'Cause they are both holy and free  
> And I'm in Ohio, satanic and chained up  
> And until the end, that's how it'll be_  
> ...  
>  _A Saint Bernard sits at the top of the driveway  
>  You always said how you loved dogs  
> I don't know if I count, but I'm trying my best  
> When I'm howling and barking these songs_  
> 
> 
> "Saint Bernard" - Lincoln


End file.
